Israeli hackers brought down Iran’s Press TV website and two websites belonging
to the Islamic Republic’s Ministry of Health and Medical Education on
Thursday.

The hackers, who call themselves IDF Team, said their actions
were a response to a series of attacks on Israeli sites the previous
day.

Three additional Iranian sites were hacked and their servers altered
to display an Israeli flag and anti-Arab text in English.

Press TV, the
Iranian regime’s English language satellite channel, was unavailable following
the announcement by the hackers.

“At 16:30 Israel Clock the Iranian
Ministry of Health and Medical Education website will be down until further
notice. In addition to Iran’s television network, broadcasting in English
round-the-clock, based in Tehran that [is] called Press TV will be down until
further notice,” the hackers wrote in a message.

“Ahmadinejad what do you
have to say about that?” they added.

The attack represents the latest
chapter in an Internet feud that began early January when an Arab hacker
published tens of thousands of Israeli credit card numbers on the
Internet.

Earlier, IDF Team told The Jerusalem Post it was preparing a
response after the websites of two Israeli hospitals – the Sheba Medical Center
at Tel Hashomer and the private Assouta hospital network – were taken offline on
Wednesday.

IDF Team has played a pivotal part in Israeli counter-strikes
on high-profile Arab websites following attacks by Arab hackers. The team
appears to have employed a combination of attacks to disable the Iranian
websites on Thursday, by launching distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS)
attacks and breaking into Iranian servers.

On Wednesday, the Haaretz
Hebrew website was downed by pro-Palestinian hackers. Haaretz said it saw a
message claiming responsibility for the attack by hackers calling themselves
“Anonymous Palestine.” The website of the financial news site The Marker was
also unavailable Wednesday.

Last week, Israeli hackers brought down the
Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency website and the Abu Dhabi Stock Exchange site, in
retaliation for a DDoS attack on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and the El Al
websites.